TV Monday: Revolution

“The information revolution,” Steve Jobs famously said, “is a revolution of free energy (and) of free intellectual energy. It’s very crude today, yet our Macintosh computer takes less power than a 100-watt bulb to run, and it can save you hours a day. What will it be able to do 10 or 20 years from now, or 50 years from now?”

Not much, if it’s plugged into a power outlet in the not-too-distant future world depicted in Revolution. At it’s core, Revolution is driven by the idea that much of what we take for granted today — iPods, MacBook Pros and TV — can vanish in an instant, if the power goes out.

The notion that one day all the power might go out, never to come back on again, is a nifty idea for a TV show — the post-apocalyptic doomsday tale as family drama.

As anyone who’s watched Revolution from the beginning knows by now, though, there’s a big difference between a good idea and a compelling, watchable series that makes you want to tune in every week. In recent weeks, Revolution has been flat, uninspired and predictable — when it isn’t outright contrived.

True, Revolution has drawn a sizable crowd, especially in the U.S., where it follows the fast-rising, resurgent The Voice on NBC — proving that in the age of the wireless remote and shortened attention spans, a lot of people are still slow to change the channel once the TV is on.

Monday’s episode picks up where last week’s silliness left off, with the gang on the run from the evil militia. Nora (Daniella Alonso) stumbles over a long-lost relative she thought to be dead, and must choose between family and a sacred promise. Meanwhile, back at the militia ranch, tensions rise between Capt. Neville (Giancarlo Esposito) and Gen. Monroe (David Lyons) — one more predictable twist in an increasingly predictable tale.

If you’ve been watching Revolution, be warned: Monday’s episode is new, but two weeks from now it will disappear until late March. Long hiatuses have wrecked lesser TV shows in the past, especially those that tell a serialized story from week to week. Will viewers — even diehard fans — have the patience to wait four months until the next new episode?

Recent evidence, as exemplified by The Event and FlashForward, suggests they might not. On the other hand, The Walking Dead — AMC’s hit drama about a lonely band of survivors struggling to get by in a post-apocalyptic doomsday landscape of their own making — suggests they will, if the show is strong enough.

After eight episodes, though, one thing is clear: Revolution is no Walking Dead.

It’s a shame, really, because it is a good idea for a solid, watchable TV drama. While the acting is frankly embarrassing at times, there are some fine actors in the cast. Twilight veteran Billy Burke has a certain, tightly coiled presence as Revolution‘s man of action Miles Matheson, and Winnipeg native Tracy Spiridakos shows flashes of potential in the potentially breakout role of rebellious, headstrong teen heroine Charlie Matheson. Esposito, an Emmy nominee for Breaking Bad and a recurring player in the gentle family fantasy Once Upon a Time, is better than the material, and fanboy favourite Elizabeth Mitchell, so memorable in Lost, is more or less wasted in Revolution.

In a more competitive fall season, Revolution might have vanished without a trace. In this season, though, where mediocrity is the norm, Revolution qualifies as a hit.

That may change. A four-month hiatus is enough to discourage even the most dedicated fan. Revolution is a reminder — again — that a compelling pilot episode does not always make a compelling series. It’s a reminder that even solid performers like Esposito and Burke can only do so much when the situations are contrived and the dialogue lame. Revolution is a children’s show, masquerading as adult drama. Can it last? Time will tell — provided the power stays on. (Citytv, NBC, 10 ET/PT, 8 MT)

Three to See

* The Voice has been soaring of late. Not as slickly produced as The X Factor and not as popular as American Idol — yet — The Voice is fascinating, if only for the sheer diversity of its singers, as evident in Monday’s two-hour Top 10 performance show. It’s impossible to judge between soul, pop-rock, jazz, opera, hip-hop and mariachi — yes, mariachi — but that intoxicating mix of musical styles is just one of the things that makes The Voice so compelling. (CTV Two, NBC, 8 ET/PT, 9 MT)

* Dancing With the Stars: All-Stars returns to a semblance of normality — in the scheduling, anyway — with Monday’s performance show, on the heels of last week’s pre-emption for the U.S. election results. Former Olympians and potential front-runners Apolo Anton Ohno and Shawn Johnson are still in the mix, as is Kirstie Alley. Alley is not a former Olympian, but she is a charter member of Dancing‘s achy breaky dance set. (CTV, ABC, 8 ET/PT, 9 MT)

* Homegrown standup cut-up Ron James entertains the crowd in his latest national special, Ron James: Manitoba Bound, which features the Newfoundland comedian’s take on such diverse water cooler topics as the Hudson Bay fur trade, mid-life moose encounters, eight-month-long winters and how to behave if you’re spotted on a Winnipeg street corner with nothing to do. Strictly for fans. (CBC, 8 ET/PT)

National TV columnist for Postmedia News Network.
Two solitudes:
“My dream is to have a bank of TVs where all the different channels are on at the same time and I can be monitoring them,” the social... read more critic Camille Paglia told Wired magazine, back in the day, before Big Brother and before Survivor. “I love the tabloid stuff. The trashier the program is, the more I feel it’s TV.”
And then there’s this, from Gilligan’s Island creator Sherwood Schwartz: “There’s a lot of underlying philosophy to the characters on Gilligan’s Island. They’re really a metaphor for the nations of the world, and their purpose was to show how nations have to get along together . . . or cease to exist.”
There you have it, then. The trashier a program is, the more it’s like TV. Or, if you prefer, TV is a metaphor for the nations of the world, and Gilligan’s Island was really a message about why we don’t all get along.
That’s where I come in.
My first TV memory was of being menaced by a Dalek on Doctor Who — the original, scratchy, black-and-white Who.
My more recent TV memories include the Sopranos finale; 9/11; Elvis Costello’s first appearance (and temporary banishment) on Saturday Night Live; what was really inside the Erlenmeyer flask in The X-Files; Law & Order (the original, and those iconic chimes); glued to the set at 3am local time during the 2003 war in Iraq — TV’s first real-time war —and Bart Simpson scrawling on the chalkboard in The Simpsons’ opening credits: “I Must Not Write All Over the Walls.”
Other Bart-isms, as seen on that TV chalkboard over the years: “I Will Never Win an Emmy,” “I No Longer Want My MTV,” and, pointedly — if a little hopefully — “Network TV is Not Dead.”
I was there to witness "the new dawn of the sitcom" in the mid-1990s, followed — inevitably — by the glut of terrible sitcoms in the early naughts, a glut that led, directly and indirectly, to the rise of reality TV.
There’s been a lot to talk about — good, bad and indifferent — about TV over the years.
That’s where you, and this space, come in. Read on. Enjoy, feel free to agree, disagree and dispute whenever you want. TV may be ugly at times, but it's a mirror of democracy in action. A funhouse mirror at times, a sober reflection at others.View author's profile